More than 40% of Americans — over 137 million people — live in areas with unhealthy levels of outdoor air pollution. Communities with poor air quality are predominately found in the Western US and in underserved areas.

Utah exemplifies these air quality challenges.  It periodically experiences the worst air quality in the US, yet state-run monitoring stations are sparse: more than one half of Utah’s counties have no regulatory monitors and receive no air quality forecasts. Children and student athletes are particularly vulnerable to unhealthy air because their still-developing lungs have more rapid breathing rates. Consequently, individuals making decisions about youth activities lack adequate resources to protect these vulnerable individuals from air quality hazards.

A University of Utah team is working to address , led by Kerry Kelly, associate professor of chemical engineering in the U’s John and Marcia Price College of Engineering, is working to address this critical lack of information by working closely with high school athletic trainers, physicians, physical education instructors, the Utah High School Activities Association, the Utah State Board of Education, the Parent Teachers Association, and the State Health Department.

Kerry’s collaborators at the U include Heather Holmes, associate professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, Ross Whitaker, professor in the Kahlert School of Computing, Derek Mallia, research assistant professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Sara Yeo, associate professor in the Department of Communication, and Nancy Daher, in the Department of Family & Preventative Medicine.

As part of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Civic Innovation Challenge, the team is embarking on a wide-ranging project to empower

  • Deploying cost-effective air quality sensors on 40 athletic fields and in 20 Pre-K schools in Utah, with an emphasis on rural and underserved areas.
  • Developing high-resolution, automated numerical forecasts of air pollution hazards, specifically for wintertime inversions, wildfire smoke, ozone, and dust events. The numerical models are optimized for pollutant transport in mountainous regions to improve the air quality modeling capabilities in the Western US, and cover a 12-kilometer range with hourly updates.
  • Developing an engaging user interface, co-developed with our civic partners to provide critical information to decision makers.
  • Co-developing uniform guidelines across the state of Utah that protect youth in a way that is operationally sound.

The team’s existing air quality monitoring tools are available at https://www.aqandu.org and https://airview.tellusensors.com.